


Hold On

by PenNameHere



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-11
Updated: 2016-11-10
Packaged: 2018-08-30 07:05:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8523337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenNameHere/pseuds/PenNameHere





	1. Chapter 1

                Jack shuffles around a pile of cherry printed skirts and navy blazers to stand against the wall. The entire building is littered with clothing and articulated mannequins like some kind of retail grave yard. He’d been here, way back in his last year of grade school for an American History field trip. It hadn't looked much better then, to be honest.

                He lit his pip boy, lifting it up to illuminate the cavernous room. Valentine paid him no attention, focused on a display featuring a green and yellow plastic parrot locked inside a cage. His metal fingers traced the lettering of the plaque affixed to the front of the stand and Jack wondered if he had been here too, before he’d become a collection of cogs and transformers.

                It still bothered him, after all these years wandering the wastes, to find _so many_ velvet paintings laying around in the ruins. All those grinning cereal advertisements that hung off the walls and the shitty synthetic cloths that had managed to outlast civilization itself. They had been nothing but the latest flash trends, half out before they had made it in. Julie had loved them, constantly redecorating and arranging new plastic and pleather furniture in the latest patterns.

                His entire culture had been whittled down, all meaning and significance shaved off till nothing was left but a sparse collection of plastic doodads and rubber coated bullshit. God, how he’d hated it.

                People now though, they worshiped it. They sought out those shitty Cheep-o-Mart brand rubber boot soles and Nuka Cola bottles. They _needed_ them. Couldn’t live without them.

                Most of the people he knew could barely read at a 2nd grade level. If there was anyone alive who could tan a hide or start a fire without an old world widget of some sort he hadn’t met them.  ‘Old world’ was a household brand now, the only brand name you could trust.

Shitty leftovers. Only thing standing between his species and extinction.

                Jack shuffled down the center of the room, illuminating each diorama in turn. The ceiling had collapsed half way up the stair well at the far end. Valentine had no problem navigating the mess. When Jack finally squeezed through into the room, ass first and eyes closed, Valentine gripped his shoulder and held him steady.

                Makeshift beds were set up against the far wall, each lined up one foot from the next, except the last, wedged to close to its neighbor by half. 

                The pip boy illuminated what the cloudy windows couldn’t. A smear of blood, not wet enough to glisten, ran across the length of the room and out into the hallway. The rest of the room was untouched. Valentine already had his pistol out, both hands on the grip as Jack swung the rickety pipe rifle from his back and braced it against his shoulder.

                The blood belonged to a man. Nineteen, maybe twenty. It was hard to tell someone’s age out in the wasteland but the boy looked younger than himself. Further down the hall one of his legs lay awkward and stiff among an orgy of half-dressed mannequins and bowling pins. Jack resettled his rifle and waded around the corpse, following Valentine toward the first doorway off the main hall.

                They weren’t quite halfway when the wood floor let out a creaking groan from somewhere deeper in the building. Another followed and Jack backed into the wall, taking aim down the hall. Whatever it was, it wasn’t small. Steps - two, three then the silhouette of a large, horned head emerged from the last door on the left.

                He held his breath, wondering at the intricacies of fitting a death claw through a doorway as its shoulders flexed and squeezed to fit between the joists. Unprepared, he tumbled sideways through a doorway at the small jerk to his elbow. The brief fumble was masked by a ruckus that sounded in the hallway and Jack carefully rolled off the robot’s chest and onto his knees. He was still trying to pull himself off the floor when Valentine tugged urgently at his sleeve, leading him further into the dark room and guiding him forward into a metal hollow low in the wall. The robot followed, backing himself in and pulled the doors shut.

                Yellow eyes illuminated the door enough for him to see the small, thin slats that ran lengthwise across the metal doors. He pressed himself tight against Valentines back and peered out through the grating.

                In the room beyond the metal box nothing moved. The death claw shuffled around in the hall, sending mannequins and bowling pins rolling past the door. Valentine had shut his eyes so that when he pulled back to whisper into his ear he had to find it first.

“Do you think it will smell us?”

                “You, certainly. Me, not so much.” Valentine paused and Jack could hear him resettle his hands on the thick handles. “Take my gun.”

                When the death claw finally rounds the doorway, it’s muzzle twitching and massive horns scoring along the doorjamb, Jack is ready. In the doorway the beast gives a great snort and drops down onto its front knuckles to press its face into the floor before advancing on their little metal hideaway.

_Coming_ , he mouths, lips pressed directly into the shell of Valentine’s ear. He feels braver then he should, with the metal door and the metal man between him and the beast. Moments later it was there, snout to the grating and huffing in a deep, noisy breath. Valentine is stiff beneath him, shoulders locked tight while curious claws scrabble over the grating inches from their faces, catching on the lip of the door and the narrow slats - plucking ineffectually.

                Jack tucks his face into the cavernous hole in Valentine’s neck when a gust of expiration rolls over him, moist and rancid. Inside the robot smells like metal and grease and Jack catches his nose in a bundle of wires that runs down the front of the others throat.

                Hours later Jack rests his head against the back of his companion’s shoulder and shifts carefully, wincing. _I have to pee_ ; he mouths silently into the synthetic flesh behind his ear. Valentine cracks one yellow eye, illuminating the small alcove and twists his neck to look behind them.

_In the back_ , he whispers. Jack twist one shoulder to stare further into the box before, sliding carefully backwards, one hand searching urgently for _something._ He’s pressed up against the wall of the box when he finally jambs his thumb into a small hole. It’s barely large enough for his thumb, but it’s there and Jack belatedly realizes that they are wedged into a service bot cavity. He glances furtively forward at the outline of Valentine against the slatted door before releasing the placard of his suit and pulling himself out.  

_Damn it_ but he should have argued harder with Nick. They could have made it out while the Death claw napped. Jack wasn’t stealthy, but he was _lucky_. They hadn’t left though, and now here he was, trying to stuff his dick in an exhaust tube for a 200 year old vacu-bot system.

                Jack dipped his finger in, checking for blockages. He was withdrawing his hand, cock held at ready, when the pipe gave a hard shutter and twisted. Shock sent him backwards, into the riveted panel behind him. In the yellow light he gaped at the blood pouring from his hand, welling up and overflowing down the thighs of his half opened suit. Valentine was on him, fleshy hand curling around the missing fingers. His other hand pounds on the metal plate behind his head, crushing them both back as the door forward swings open over his shoulder.  

                Somehow valentine pushes through, rivets snapping and plaster raining down. He shoves Jack into the empty cavity between the two walls and scrambles in behind him. The beast roars but fishes halfheartedly, dangling its long claws over the warped panel. Jack wraps his hand in his shirt and stares at the talons, wedged between Nick and the poly-stud bracing.

                In the yellow light of his eyes he can see the robot removing a Stim-Pak from his coat pocket. Jack twists his hand tighter into his shirt.

                “Fuck,” he whimpers, pressing back into the stud. Nick’s synthetic skin crinkles around his eyes in sympathy but he still tightens his grip on his wrist and angles the fabric covered hand so that he can jab the pronged tip into the gushing hole where his fingers weren’t.

                Jack is crying by the third stim, begging him to stop as he lines up another shot over the soaked fabric. The stims are shoddy, at best. The last one had felt like battery acid, which wasn’t unusual but faithfully unpleasant, and had left him throbbing and snotting at the nose.

              


	2. Homeward Bound

                He stares into the puckered mess that had been his hand. The scarring was spreading, eating up parts of his hand that hadn’t been damaged by the clearing blades in the refuse tube and it looks more like melting rubber than flesh. It happened sometimes, whatever was in the Stim-paks, sometimes they made things worse. He had a mass on his left leg from a bullet wound he’d taken at Cambridge that looked more like a plate of spaghetti than an entry wound for a 10mm slug. It was a risk you accepted out in the commonwealth.

                It had only been a day and a half since they had escaped the museum. Their luck hadn’t run dry yet and they had stumbled on nothing more pressing than a trio of rad-flies. Which was for the best really, considering that trying to handle his gun with his left hand was not going well. He had never been much for close-combat, but the reality of managing the recoil on his gun with his left hand was unlikely.

                Outside the abandoned hut the rain sounds like gunfire, falling from the sky in plump balls against the corrugated roof. Nick has perched in the window, his soggy boots propped up against the metal fire can and a lit cigarette clamped between his metal fingers. Jack folds and unfolds his own, stretching the tight tissue and watches Nick watch the rain.

                “ _Now here's Connie Allen with a song that's... well, uhhh... It's about... uhh, heh. Heh heh. Uhh... here's Rocket 69.”_ Travis chirps from his wrist. Jack relaxes back into the musty cloth scraps piled in the corner of the hut and carefully rolls the radio dial with the side of his thumb until the static dissipates.  

                “How’s your hand?” Valentine flicks his cigarette and turns his yellow eyes on Jack.

                “Little stiff,” he flexes it, as if to illustrate the way the scar tissue pulls at his ring finger.

                “I’ve seen prettier.”

                “Heh... Yeah. I, uh… Listen, I was thinking. You ever seen one of those pneumatic fists?”

                Nick jerks to a stop, like one of his cogs had skipped its track. Before Jack can say anything he’s moving again, lifting the glowing cigarette to his lips. “Yeah.”

                 “I should get one. You know, to replace the gun.”

                “You aren’t exactly built for taking a beating, kid. How about we get you home before you start planning your next one.”

                Jack wasn’t stupid. He was walking meat out here. Without Nick he’d be defenseless. Nick hadn’t said as much but Jack suspected he’d be at the business end of a serious conversation about settling down when they got back to Diamond City. He wasn’t ready to settle down. Didn’t want to start scraping holes in the dust and praying for rain instead of raiders.

                At least out here he had a marketable skill to fall back on. He could kill things all day long. Carrots didn’t need killing, they needed harvesting and watering and plowing and planting. They never carried caps or well fitted armor. Hell, he found more carrots on the radars he killed then he did in the ground. The radars did all his hard work for him, he just swooped in and harvested his crop after the farmers and shop keeps finished fattening them up.

“Next one might be my last if I don’t find some way to fight back.”

“We’ll get you back to Diamond city.”

                Jack smiles at Nick through the cloud of smoke pouring out of his neck. “Most of me, anyways.”

                “The important bits.” Nick slid his hat off his head and lay it over his face, hiding his smile. Jack would never have confused Nick for human, but sometimes, when he looked at him in pieces he could almost imagine. That smile did it every time.

_“So, uh… here’s something. That happened sometime. Here, in the common wealth. The raider settlement of Sanctuary… It, uh. It burnt down. Sounds like a bad case of the ‘got what they deserved-eds’. Or a good case. Because, you know… that would be a-a good thing. Um, anyways. Here he is. Again. Bob Crosby.”_

                “Hey,” Nick tipped his hat off, frowning. “Sanctuary. You’re from that part of town, yeah?”

                Jack frowns at the dial, mouth set. “Yeah. Was. Fuck, Wadsworth is going to blow a gasket.”

                “There is a house for sale up in Diamond City you know,” Nick leads, looking as uncomfortable as Jack feels with the poor excuse for a segway. It looks like they _won’t_ be making it home before the lecture starts.

                “You wouldn’t want me for a neighbor Nick. It’d bring the property values down.”

                Nick chuckles, low and shy. “I’d sure rest easier knowing you were there. Besides, I was thinking the town could really do with a slum. A robot, maybe a couple of ghouls. We could get a Brahmin.” Nick grins, but its strained. They both know how tentative his continued residence in the diamond has gotten, though they hadn’t discussed it. Last month’s editorial had stirred up enough concern that Jack wasn’t entirely sure they would be letting them back in when they arrived.

                Fucking journalists.

                They avoid talking about the house and the city for the rest of the night, conversation wandering until the sky lost the last of its greenish silver glow and turned black.


	3. Over the Rainbow

                He doesn't want to buy the house. He doesn’t want to settle down in Diamond City. He doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life playing Watson with Valentine. He doesn’t want Vadim sticking his giant fucking nose in his business or all those god damned children running around. In the end, it hadn’t really mattered. He bought the damned house just to shut everyone up.

                The door had a lock and was possibly his favorite part of his newly acquired domesticity. Jack hid behind it, shuffling the junk around aimlessly from one room to another until piles started to resemble beds and stacks of tires became chairs. When the urge to get up and go hit him he sunk as deep into the makeshift mattress as he could and pumped himself full of med-ex until he could sleep.

                Tonight, however, he was out of med-ex and the “pharmacy” was closed so he made his way to the Dug Out, where at least he could find booze.

                Vadim is smiling broadly at him from behind the bar when he arrives, pouring out a shot of rotgut with a flourish. “Ahh! Ha-ha! My friend! Please, sit down. Yadim tells me that you have joined our merry little town. Is good for you to have come to your senses.”

                Jack focuses on the small glass before picking it up with his left hand. He gets it to his lips but spills a drizzle down his chin. Mopping it with his fist he frowns at other man from behind his sleeve. “Yeah,” he chokes out around the oily burn as it goes down. It’s the first thing he’s said to anyone in a week and he’s already tired of socializing.

                “Is good to have you.” He pours him a second shot before fishing a beer from underneath the bar. It was cold enough for sweat to bead off its side. “Now,” he says, setting it in front of him “tell your old friend Vadim what has happened.”

                He doesn’t want to and from the way Vadim has been avoiding looking at his hand he probably doesn’t have to. News spreads fast in cesspools like this. Jack was still chewing on his non-answer when he was saved by the arrival of a slender, dark haired man in a varsity jacket.

                “Travis,” the bulky man bellowed, gesturing broadly. “Is wonderful to see you! You spend too much time talking into that box of yours. Yadim! Travis is here!”

                Jack sinks back in his seat and wraps his good hand around his beer, turning to eye the other man. Travis was younger than him, but not by as much as the jacket made him look. Five years, tops. Other than that he looked almost exactly like he sounded. Jack listened to several minutes’ worth of stuttered small talk before the two men moved on to new customers.

                “Travis, huh?” Jack fills the sudden void, glad for the diversion. “You’re the DJ from the radio station.” The brunette stammered out an affirmative and hunched in on himself over the bar, curling around his beer.

                “I like your show,” that got him an awkward smile and a tilted head.

                “T-thanks. I uhh… I’m not sure who… I mean. I don’t know who you… I-it’s nice to meet you.”

John shifted his beer from his good hand to the bar and wiped his hand on his pants before offering it to the other man. “Jack Napier.”

Travis looked down at the offered hand, then quickly from his face to the hand resting next to his beer. “Oh! I… ah! I mean, I know. I… uh. _Oh, dear_.”

                Jack dropped his hand slowly when it became clear there would be no awkward shake forthcoming. As far as diversions went, this wasn’t going very well. Travis looked nearly terrified. “It’s okay. I mean… the reporting and all. It’s kind of flattering. Was… kind of flattering.” Jack pressed, beginning to feel slightly awkward himself. He wished he had more med-ex.

                “I’m sorry”

                “Don’t be.” Jack forces a smile and shifts his weight onto the bar to get a better look at the other man’s face. A bulbous, oversized nose and a set of red rimmed eyes peer back at him from behind the collar of his jacket. “Actually, I… uh. I have a... a few holodisks I’d put aside for you. That I found.” Travis shifts on his seat and nods into his beer. “Music, I mean,” He clarifies. Travis uncurls a bit and looks at him again.

                “Yeah? That’s great. That’s… uh… great.”

                Jack gave him a half smile and slides his empty across the bar, standing. He wasn’t so hard up that he was going to sit here and make some poor kid nervous all night. Maybe if he knocked hard enough on the dealer’s door he’d answer. “I’ll drop them off sometime. It was nice meeting you.”

                “You too. I mean, nice meeting you too. I’m… uh, I’m Travis, by the way,” Jack was startled when the other man reached up and grasped his twisted hand, squeezing awkwardly. “I mean, you knew that. I just.. uhh…” Jack could feel the moment the other man registered his mistake followed by a sudden jolt as he ripped his hand away and let out an exclamation of surprise. “I’m sorry. Oh god… _Dumb, god I’m so dumb_. Please don’t...”

                “It’s nice to meet you Travis. You have a good night,” He tells him, and skirts around him to wave at Vadim, who’s in the corner gesturing wildly and beaming at a blond woman in a flight jacket.

***

                The drugs help. His hand hurts less and the walls feel less restrictive. He has enough caps stashed away to keep himself in med-ex until the next nuclear war. It was a good feeling.

                The next morning, hung over and feeling rebellious he goes to visit Dr. Sun. The older man prodded and tutted over his hand as they sat inside the open air shelter. His fingers gouged roughly around the thick scaring to get at the flesh beneath. Beyond the post frame passersby gawked and whispered. Jack had never been particularly concerned with his privacy when he’d been a soldier, but he desperately missed civilization now, with its closed doors and confidentiality agreements.

                The scaring was extensive. According to the Doctor it had eaten through skin and muscle, encasing the bones of his hand. There was nothing he could do until the stim had run its course and the last hard knots of flesh had relaxed into tight scars. The doctor didn’t say as much, but Jack suspected amputation was as far as his options spread.

                Hand tucked gingerly into his pocket he gathered himself, tucking away the sharp, childish disappointment that was gathering in his chest. He had known that there was little the wasteland “doctor” would have been able to do for him. He hadn’t really _expected_ a miracle, just wanted one.

                By the time he wandered over to Arturo’s shop the pricking behind his eyes had vanished and the milling, whispering crowd had dispersed. The vendor, whom Jack had always harbored a small affection for, winced sympathetically when he produced his hand and took it between his own. Unlike Dr. Sun, Arturo’s fingers pressed carefully as he tested the malleability of his remaining digits.

                “Does this hurt?” Arturo asked, pressing his pinky and thumb together under his palm. Jack shook his head.

                “I can’t keep them like that though.”

                Arturo hummed, sliding dark fingers over his wrist. “You need all your fingers for a Pneumatic Fist. Have you ever used a gauntlet?”

                Jack frowned, obligingly tried wiggling his fingers, or what was left of them, when the other pressed his own into the bones of his wrist. “I’ve never even seen one.”

                “They aren’t common. There isn’t a lot of call for hand-to-hand weapons. If you’re close enough to smell a super mutant your already dead.” The dark skinned man disappears behind his counter for several minutes, sifting through bins and boxes. “I’ve got some other stuff”, he frowns, setting a long mire lurk claw down across the aging laminate. “But it’s mostly cutlery and duct tape.”

“I remember that, that one asshole taped _spoons_ to his hand.! Still nearly took out my eye. Fuck was he was high.”

                “Well, I think we can do him one better at least.” Arturo flipped the claw over to expose a set of straps and set to work lacing him in. “This is the best I’ve got, and it’s not good. Look,” he says, and Jack looks up to see the other man frowning at him. “It isn’t my place to hand out advice usually, but seeing as how its related to weapons I figure I maybe should. This here isn’t a weapon for a man who’s looking to come back in one piece. There is a reason you don’t see anyone who isn’t doped up on psycho wearing one of these. You’re going to get killed out there with this.” Arturo rubs his hand over his mouth, watching the noodle shack over his shoulder. “Maybe you should consider giving up the salvage business Jack, we aren’t exactly good friends, but I’d hate to be the one to send you out to your death.”

“I’ve still got my guns,” Jack objects, but it feels childish in the light of the other man’s concern.

                “You never could hold a pistol straight,” he gruffs, tightening the last strap and adjusting the long piece that laid over his elbow. “Only person I’ve ever met that needed to add weight to their gun to hold it steady. You’ve got shakes like ol’ Jones has the DTs. How’d this happen anyway? Hell of a mess.”

                “Deathclaw”, he deadpanned, wiggling his thumb.


	4. Drunken Piano

                Jack takes the gauntlet. It feels good strapped around his arm. Heavy and awkward, like he could smash someone’s head in with it. Arturo may have been an asshole for saying it, but he was right – Jack couldn’t shoot for shit with a pistol, never had been able too. Even back when he’d been a soldier he’d been a rifle man. He liked his weapons to feel solid, liked to know where they were.

                That’s why he liked the med-ex so much, he thought, staring up at the dark ceiling overhead. Med-ex made you heavy, pulled you down. It pulled you in and compacted you until you could keep track of what was going on and the world couldn’t pull you apart anymore.

                Jack was just rolling over the peak now, mind settled. He smashed a button on his pip boy and dumped another cartridge on his chest before plugging a new one in with his bad hand. His wrist gave a soft chug before the tiny speakers let out a few chords of a song he didn’t recognize. He’d only gone through a small pile of the cassettes, carefully labeling each one as well as he could. He’d promised Travis weeks ago – wasn’t like he had anything else going on, but the job was tedious.

                He’d made the decision to lug the giant crate over to the man’s camper without considering the amount of cassettes he’d accumulated over the years. It also turned out that just because Travis was talking on the radio didn’t mean he was actually ON the radio. Jack had broken into the trailer and dumped load after load of cartridges onto the empty table and the floor. Travis had still not returned and it was getting late. He hadn’t wanted to startle him so he’d set himself up in the doorway, facing out into the lukewarm night.

                Diamond city never had breezes, which was probably a good thing for most of the rickety shacks that dotted the roadways but it made for some pretty muggy weather. He’d shed his jacket and bared his arms but he was still sweating. He was marking another cassette, pinned against his thick thigh with his bad hand when Travis shuffled through the mouth of the alleyway and came to a startled stop several feet in front of Jack.

                “Oh! Oh, uh, hey. I-it’s you. Wha-what are you doing there? Um… In my door, I mean. Not here in the City. I know why you’re in the city. Just… uh, just here-here. In my, uh… in my door. Here…”

                “I wanted to give you these,” he flipped up the cassette to illustrate as the younger man trailed off. “But you weren’t home.” Jack squinted at the man, taking in the way he swayed gently and the patchy red of his face under the fairy lights someone had strung up in the chain-link.

                “I was at Yadim’s,” he says and Jack struggles to sit back up and clear the doorway to let the other man through. He’d amassed a pile of labeled holotapes on the steps but had barely made a dent in the massive collection he’d deposited inside the man’s trailer.

                “That’s…. a lot.” He eyed the cartridges that had infested his home with concern, long fingers plucking two from the radio desk beside him. “Where did you get them? N-not that I think you stole them! I mean, you wouldn’t do that. Um…”

                Jack grins and deposits his armload of labeled cassettes into the other man’s lap. “Only some of them. Don’t worry,” he laughs at Travis’s frown. “No one will miss them. Aren’t many holoplayers out there these days. I don’t think most of these have been played since the war.”

                Travis doesn’t look convinced but doesn’t argue the point. Jack deposits his pen into the mountain of labeled cassettes, stuck out at a jaunty angle. “Happy birthday! Now, you want to help? I’ll play, you write.” He grins wolfishly and drapes himself over the bed. “Always wanted my own secretary.”

                The med-ex fog is thick but he can still feel the dim coal of arousal as he leans back against the wall of the camper and examines the peeling label on the first cassette.

***

                It’s morning before Jack can stretch out over the bed without laying on top of a pile of holotapes. He lounges now, veins empty, and watchs the younger man sort through the ones in his lap. They aren’t listening anymore, though there are plenty of cassettes left to listen to.

                “How come no one sings these days?” He’s genuinely curious. Music was something every culture he’d ever heard of had developed, but the wasteland seemed to have lost it almost entirely.

                “Sings?” Travis looks up at that, slow with too much of the yellowed vodka that sits at his elbow. His face looks jaundiced in the morning light and his eye sockets stand out like a jack-o-lantern’s. “Lots of people sing.”

                “New songs though. Or play the guitar. No one plays the guitar.”

                “I saw one once,” Travis offers, throat bobbing. “A, uh, guitar. Only had one… uh… one thing. I mean, it needs more than one, right?”

                “What, a string? Sure.” Jack frowns at the ceiling and the light coming through the window. “Flutes though? Even cavemen made flutes.”

                Travis doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Fluting, it turns out, wasn’t something people just took up in their spare time like guitar. Not a lot of them rolling around the wasteland. Jack yawns and digs his toes into the blanket beneath him. He could use another shot soon, but he’s comfortable and Travis is fiddling with a tape, eyeing the radio equipment like it might bite.

                “Are you going to play something?” He asks eventually, when Travis starts to set the cassette aside.

                Travis waves a holotape at him, then frowns down at it. “Uh.. um… Jasper? I mean, Jasper Beags. Uh… Sister?”

                “That’s a good one,” he tells him evenly. Travis finishes most of what is left in his tumbler, turning the cartridge over in his hands.

                “Do you, ah… You think they will like it?”

                Of course they’ll like it. If they don’t, there is plenty else to choose from. Don’t worry so much.” Jack hauls himself out of his cocoon of bedding, sending cassettes skittering across the worn linoleum like gunfire. “You want me to do it?”

                Jack wasn’t reaching for the cartridge but Travis hauls it back into his chest anyways, letting out a distressed huff. “No, ah. No… I uh. Its very delicate machinery. I, uh. I better do it. Just let me…” He’s fiddling with things then and Jack counts three knobs of his spine through the neck of his shirt before he catches the edge of his kit with his toes and pulls it across the floor.

                Inside he’s got several vials of med-ex and an assortment of other drugs, just in case. He measures out a careful syringe full while Travis leans over the microphone.

                “Here’s uh… here’s a new one. A song, I mean. Someone uh, found this out there in the wastes, it’s a new one. At least no one who’s alive now has heard it. Well, uh. Unless you’re a ghoul. Or… uh…”

                The med-ex makes his arm stiff with cold and he flexes what’s left of his hand as he looks back at the other man, flashing him a cheeky grin. Travis is looking at the needle that bobs vulgarly from the pit of his arm though. “Well, uh… There are a few of you who’ve heard this one before. For the rest of us, here’s… something new.” He taps a button on the console in front of him.


End file.
